


Daddy and Baba Day

by TheGriefPolice



Series: James Finds Home [4]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Father's Day, James learns to write his first words, Littles, M/M, Multi, Non-Sexual Age Play, baba - Freeform, daddy - Freeform, load of fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-20
Updated: 2016-06-20
Packaged: 2018-07-16 05:24:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,986
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7254172
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheGriefPolice/pseuds/TheGriefPolice
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Load of fluff.</p><p>James finds out that it's not just any ordinary Sunday! It's Father's Day, and he wants to celebrate! And Daddy and Baba said Maddiosn and Alex could come over! It's going to be so much fun!</p>
            </blockquote>





	Daddy and Baba Day

"Daddy!" James yelled from the living room. "Baba!"

Both men were flying out of their office faster than they thought possible. James hardly ever called for them, usually just walking to their office door if he needed anything. So when he did, it sent the men's hearts racing.

"Jay! What is it baby, are you okay?" John asked as he darted down the hall, Hal a half step behind.

James sat in the middle of the living room with the TV on and a reporter happily blabbing away as people gathered behind her. He pointed at the screen and jumped on his knees.

John didn't miss a step as he took in the sight and picked James off the floor, inspecting his fingers carefully. "What happened?"

"I 'kay! TV said feather day!" James said, trying to pull his fingers away from John to point again. 

Hal watched as James twisted around and reached towards the large TV screen I front of him. "You're not hurt, are you?"

"No! Look! Feather day!" James said more despritly. 

John sat James back on the floor and the boy ran to put a finger on the TV, pointing to the lady again. "Hey! Bear! We don't touch the TV, remember? Only the remote." He gently pulled James's hands away and kneeled down the meet the boy at eye level. "Now, what are you trying to say."

"TV ma'am said today feather day!" James smiled, looking between Hal and John.

"Feather day?" Hal mouthed to John who was just as confused. He said it silently over and over until the TV came through his thoughts.

 _As you guys can see, almost four thousand people have shown up today for the tenth annual Father's Day cook-off. Families from all across Maine are here to enjoy the sights and smells, and dig in to some of the best home-style bar-ba-que on the east coast. And, of course, the dad-joke off will be happening in just a few short minutes, where all of the dad's at the festival are welcome to come on stage with their kids and see who really has the worst dad jokes. ___The lady laughed as a man with a painted stomach ran across the stage and started doing some weird dance.

"Father's day!" Hal laughed, hitting his forehead with the palm of his hand. "Buddy, it's Father's Day, not feather day." 

"Yeah! That's what I say!" James smiled. "We go, right?" 

"Go where, bud?" John laughed, rubbing the boy's side. 

"The Barbie doll!" James pointed to the TV again. 

"Bar-ba-que." Hal corrected, watching as people shuffled around behind the still talking news lady. "I don't think we can, bear." 

James's face instantly fell. "But, the TV ma'am said--" his voice was cut off as a tear fell down his cheek and he took in a deep breath. 

John scooped the boy up and rocked lightly on his heels. "How about we do a cook out here, huh? Because it's our first Father's Day as fathers it should be really special. Just us." 

Hal nodded, that didn't sound like a bad idea at all. "Yeah, and then you can have us all to yourself instead of having to share!" 

James looked at the men through long lashes, thinking it trough. "Can Alex come too?" 

Hal sent a questioning look at John, who shrugged and raised an eyebrow. 

"Yeah, we can invite them, too." John smiled. 

James cheered, wiggling to be sat back on the floor. 

A few hours later, a knock came on the door. John opened it up and smiled at the two people standing on the porch. "You guys don't have to knock." 

"I know, but habits die hard." Maddison smiled. 

"Happy Fa'ter's day, uncle John!" Alex smiled, holding out a plate with cookies wrapped in plastic. "Mommy and I made these! She said we having a party!" 

"Kind of, sweetheart." John toon the plate with a tickle on the boy's (he was wearing a shirt with a truck on it and a pair of cargo shorts, so John took it to mean it was a boy today) side, getting a few giggles before he spotted James and took off for the living room. 

"Sorry, he's a little excited about the party." Maddison apologized with a laugh, stepping into the house and holding up a tubaware bowl. "Hope you like potato salad." 

"Yes! Thank you!" John said, taking the bowl and leading the way to the kitchen. 

Alex plopped down next to James with a smile. "You're having a party!" 

James nodded. "Yeah! It's for daddy and baba, though." 

"For daddy day, right?" Alex picked up one of the crayons on the table and helped on a picture. 

"Yeah!" James picked up a matching color and they started to work on a zoo seen. 

"Did you make them a card? Mommy loves when I make her mommy day cards!" 

James eyes Alex for a second, "Card?" 

"Yeah! Where you write out their names and draw hearts! Stuff like that." Alex put the crayon down as James started at him, very confused. "You mean you've never made a card?" 

James shook his head no. 

Alex took in a deep breath and let it out. "O-kay! I'll teach you! You got any blank paper?" 

James's eyes opened wide and he nodded. He didn't have any out, but he knew where to get it. 

"Okay, you'll need that. And some markers. And maybe some scissors." Alex listed off, then stood up. "Oh, and glitter if you have that!" 

James nodded and smiled, standing up to grab paper from the office. Daddy kept all the blank paper in there on a low shelf in case James ever wanted to color that instead of a picture. When he had that, the next problem arouse. "All my markers are way up. I can't reach." 

Alex looked up the shelf with a smug look on his face. "I think we can get it." He put his foot on the low shelf, putting his hand on the shelf at eye level and pushing off. He was up the case in no time, reaching the basket that kept James's more messy art supplies. He pulled on it and let it fall with a thud against the floor before falling back to the ground himself. It was only because the basket had a lid that everything didn't fly around the room. 

"Come on! All we need now are scissors!" Alex cheered, running from the office into the living room with James following behind. 

James sat the basket and paper on the coffee table and craned his neck to see as Daddy and baba talked to Maddy outside through the large bay window. 

"I'm not allowed to have scissors. Daddy and baba say that they can be dangerous and only to use them if an adult is watching." His fingers twisted around each other, kind of sad that he had to tell his friend they couldn't do something. 

Alex watched as James's discomfort showed obviously on his face. "That's okay! We can just rip it instead!" He forced a wide grin onto his face and reached for the basket of markers. 

Before long, they were surrounded with crayons, markers, pencils, and every odd art supply they could grab, using it once, and tossing it aside to test another. It was actually way more fun than James thought possible, watching closely as Alex taught him how to fold the paper in half to make it a card. Then, Alex ripped the paper, much to James's worry as the older boy tore away small bits of paper at a time, asking the younger to trust him. 

When Alex held up the paper, it looked somewhat like a teardrop, but then Alex opened the paper and it became a heart. 

"That's so cool!" James said, taking the paper and opening and closing it to reveal the two shapes. "Where'd you learn'ed todo that?" 

Alex smiled at the praise and shrugged. "I was taught long time ago." He watched for a minute more as James played with it before saying, "Now you gots'ta draw a picture for them!" 

Nodding, James grabbed a few crayons and started to draw, finishing when he was pleased with the colors and image. "Like that?" 

"Yeah!" Alex smiled, then handed the younger boy a black marker and said, "Now all you gotta do is write their names and put 'love James.' See, I told you it was easy!" 

James took the marker and held it for a long time. He didn't want to touch the paper with the tip, so it hovered right above. 

"Go on! Don't worry about the spelling, mommy says she doesn't mind at all on cards. Though we gots'ta do word charts sometimes. She's really strict on those." Alex took a marker and started drawing oqn his own paper, enjoying it until he saw James still hadn't written anything. "What's wrong?" 

James bit his lip as tears threaten to fall. He didn't want to cry, not in front of his friend. But it was hard to push back. "I don't know how to write." 

Alex's eyebrows met in the middle and his face furrowed. James didn't look like he was joking, but it seemed kind of silly that he wouldn't know how to write. But he recovered quickly. "Oh, sorry. You're just a baby! I forgot! Here, I'll help!" 

James wanted to argue that he wasn't a baby, but Alex took the marker and slid the card away from his grasp before he could. 

"See, it's like this!" Alex very carefully wrote across the bottom the word love in as best handwriting he could manage. "Love." 

James stared in awe at the word. Alex made it look so easy. When the older boy moved to write more, James stopped him. "No! I wanna do!" 

Alex pulled the marker away and looked at the boy. It seemed important to let him do it, but how. "How about I write 'to daddy and baba' and you sign your name?" 

James shook his head, not pleased. "No! I do daddy-baba!" 

Alex shrugged, not like it mattered to him. "Okay, you can copy this." He pulled out another piece of paper and wrote daddy and baba on it and then handed the marker and the freshly-written-on paper back to James. "Practice before you write it on the card." 

James nodded, face suddenly serious as he followed each of the letters with the marker, making them a shade darker after a second pass. Then he moved down and tried to copy them, taking each letter one at a time. 

"That looks good!" Alex smiled, which made James smile with pride. "Now put it on the card!" 

Alex flipped to the front of the card and held it as James copied the letters once more. It was sloppy and shaky, and not all of the lines met, and a few letters were backwards, but Alex was proud to teach him something. 

"Now I'll just sign your name," Alex wrote quickly across the bottom, ending it with a heart. "And we're all done!" 

"What on earth?" John said, walking into the living room. Neither boy had heard as the adults made their way back into the house with a tray of hot burgers and veggies. 

"Alex," Maddison said, already guessing that he was the cause of this. Where the boy went, trouble always seemed to follow. 

James shoot up, a smile on his face as he completely forgot about the mess he had made. But he didn't care, because in his hands was something special for his daddies. "Look!" 

Hal put aside his small amount of frustration as he looked at the sloppy writing across the half sized piece of paper. "What's this, bear?" 

"It's a card!" James announced happily. He held it up for his baba to take. "You s'posed to open it!" 

Hal took the card gingerly and held it out to his side for John to see. When he opened the card, a drawing of three people done in stick figure style greeted him. The two taller men held hands with a short boy, all three smiling happily. Behind them was a tan colored house with a big tree in the front yard and a forest behind it. "Did you make this?" 

James nodded proudly. "Uh-huh! And Alex helped! He made it a heart!" 

John smiled as he read the bottom right-hand side where "love James" was written in scratchy writing. "You did the picture and Alex did the writing, huh?" He leaned down and scooped the boy up, holding the card up to look at it with James. 

"No! Alex did this part and I did this." He pointed first to his name, then reached to close the card and point to the front. 

"Yeah! Jay did most of it himself!" Alex smiled from the floor where he still sat at the coffee table. 

John glanced down at James with a confused look. The front and signature where clearly two different people, but James could hardly read. How was he supposed to write? 

"Alex wrote down and I copy! See! It's says 'daddy' and 'baba!'" James pointed to each word in turn with a large grin across his face as he twisted his head to look up at his daddy. 

"That's awesome, little man!" Hal couldn't contain himself. He scooped Alex off the floor with a small tickle to his stomach and kissed his forehead. In thirty minutes, the kid had gotten James to do more about his illiteracy than the older men had in the months James had been staying with him. "You did good, kids." 

Alex didn't really under stand what the two older men where so excited, but decided to play along. And doing something to have them swooning over James with praise made his heart feel warm. 

"I think this makes the fridge, what about you, babe?" John asked, already walking towards the kitchen with James still in his arms, giggling away. 

"Defiantly. What do you think, Maddy?" Hal turned to the woman who had a confused grin on her face. 

"It looks worthy to me." She smiled. "Two thumbs up! Ten out of ten!" 

"Whoa! Mommy gave you a ten out of ten! That's really good!" Alex said with wide eyes. 

"Ah! And a three out of three vote! Looks like we've got no choice!" John rummaged for a magnet before letting James hold the card up to the fridge and sticking it in place right at his eye level. "There we go! Best card ever!" 

James giggles and pushed away lightly as John peppered him with kisses. "Da-dee! I hung'y!" 

John stopped with an exaggerated sigh. "Okay, I guess we can eat." He turned around to greet the room with a smile, asking, "Who's ready to eat?" 

"Me!" Alex said loudly, kicking his feet slightly to be let down. Hal let him go and he took off to the dinning room table. 

Later that night as both boys sat curled up on the couch, more asleep than awake, Hal and John offered coffee and sat in the dinning room with Maddy. 

"You know, I think this is the first Father's Day I've ever really celebrated." John said. His smile was soft and small on his face, but in a way that said, although it kind of hurt that it was true, he was okay with it. 

"I never thought I'd have a chance to be the one celebrated." Hal added in. 

John laughed at that. "Yeah, me either." 

"It was a great party though. Last minute as it was." Maddy chimed in. And it had been. Not that she minded, it's not like she really had any other plans. Her father was long gone and the day hadn't really meant much to her. So when John called with a cheering James in the background, she instantly said yes. 

"Sorry about that." Hal laughed. He took a sip from his mug and sat it back down. 

"No, it was great getting to see all of that." She smiled and leaned back a bit. "The card really was cute." 

"Even better when you realize it's probably the first words he's ever written." John leaned back with a small smirk to his face, but with his brows crunched in the middle. Like something was confusing and entertaining at the same time. "We've been trying to get James to ask for help for months, but he hasn't said a single word about it. Clearly, he wants to learn. Just doesn't know how to ask someone to teach him. We would just start right now, but we wanted him to recognize that he needs help and then be able to ask for it. 

"But then Alex comes over and is here for and hour and the kid already had two words down." John shook his head and laughed a little. 

"So that's why you made so much of a fuss about the card." Maddison smiled. "I didn't know he couldn't read." 

"It's not really something that comes up a lot." Hal shrugs. 

Maddison smiles and looks towards the back of the couch. "They're an amazing couple of kids. Have walked right through hell and back and can still smile like they do. 

"Everyone that hears about this thinks that what we do is weird, but it's not. We're just like everybody else; just trying to find a little bit of happiness in the world. We just do it in a different way." She shook her head, looking into the milky brown swirls of her coffee cup. 

"Well, here's to happiness." John said, holding up his mug. "May we always have it by us." 

Hal and Maddison brought their mugs up to his with a laugh as the mugs clinked together with the solid sound of ceramic. 


End file.
